1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recording and playing system in a device that can use an image of a digital camera, a mobile phone and a portable multimedia player. In particular, the present invention relates to an image recording and playing system and an image recording and playing method that are convenient for deleting image data recorded to a memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
With a digital camera used as a conventional image recording and playing system, the play and erasure are easy and a large amount of image (image data) of the same subject such as a person is captured in many cases. Therefore, in the case of memory shortage, a user himself/herself selects one of a large number of images and deletes the image data. That is, when the user deletes the image data, first, the user needs to check each image data.
The above-mentioned image recording and playing system is disclosed in JP-A 2000-137722 (Kokai). JP-A 2000-137722 discloses an example in which an image recording and playing system 1 is applied to a laboratory system for automatically printing out data obtained by taking (imaging) a photography by a user himself/herself, as shown in FIGS. 9 to 11.
FIG. 9 is a functional block diagram showing the entire control system of the image recording and playing system 1. FIG. 10 is a functional block diagram showing an image processing unit shown in FIG. 9. FIG. 11 is a flowchart showing a grouping processing routine shown in FIG. 9.
Referring to FIG. 9, the image recording and playing system 1 comprises: an input unit 2 that receives image data; a data converter 3 that converts the received image data into image data; an image processing unit 4 that performs predetermined image processing of the converted image data; a memory unit 5 that stores the data after the image processing; a display unit 6 that displays the received image data and sets an arbitrary mode; an output unit 7 that controls an output of a desired image; a charge calculating unit 8 that calculates a printing charge; a charge input unit 9 that determines whether or not a predetermined charge is input; and a control unit 10 that entirely controls the blocks 2 to 9.
Referring to FIG. 10, the image processing unit 4 comprises a feature extracting element 11, a similarity determining element 12, a grouping element 10, and a taking-state determining element 14.
With the above-mentioned image recording and playing system 1, as shown in FIG. 11, image processing is performed in accordance with the grouping processing routine. That is, the processing starts and it is determined, on a screen for displaying the image, whether or not a grouping mode is selected (in step S1).
If it is determined that the grouping mode is selected, it is determined whether or not the grouping reference is a scene (in step S2).
When it is determined that the grouping reference is the scene, the input RGB data is converted into HSB data (in step S3).
Then, the histograms are created every H (Hue), S (Saturation), and B (Brightness) of the images (in step S4).
After ending the histogram of the image data in a first page, data on the created histogram is stored in the memory unit. With respect to pages subsequent to the first page, the histogram data is sequentially created and is stored in the memory unit, and H, S, and B patterns are created for the image data in all pages and are stored (in step S5).
The histogram patterns of H, S, and B for the image data in all pages are read from the memory unit (in step S6).
Subsequently, the pattern matching is executed every image in the pages (in step S7).
It is determined whether or not the difference between the histogram patterns of compared images is less than a threshold value (in step S8).
If it is determined in step 8 that the difference is less than a threshold value, it is determined whether or not the images in the pages have an image obtained by taking the same scene (in step S9).
The processing for reading the histogram pattern, executing the pattern matching, and determining the same scene is iterated for the image data in all pages and is then ended (in step S10).
After ending the determination of all the images with the same scene, the photographic images determined with the same scene are grouped on the memory unit (in step S11).
As mentioned above, with the image recording and playing system 1, even if there is a large amount of photographic data, the processing in steps S1 to S11 can automatically and easily group the photographic data every similar scene without manual operation.
With the conventional image recording and playing system 1, even if there is a large amount of photographic data, the photographic data can be automatically and easily grouped every similar scene without manual operation. Accordingly, upon selecting a desired image, the image data can be roughly searched every group.
Therefore, the user can relatively easily select the image data to be viewed and the image data to be deleted by the user.
However, with the image recording and playing system 1, even if the data can be roughly searched every group, the user needs to visually check all the amount of raw image data as a search target based on the group unit one by one and, particularly when the amount of image data is large, the check operation is troublesome and large labor is required.